University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

 L.N. Tolstoy's War and Peace is my favorite book. Kathryn Feuer's study recounts the fascinating story of how this supreme masterpiece ripened in Tolstoy's imagination and explores the interconnection between its development and political events in Russia in the 1850s and 1860s. Her work serves as a model of close textual scrutiny that leads to exciting discoveries about the creative process, and, at the same time, it reflects generous international cooperation among scholars. Feuer was one of the first Americans to participate in academic exchanges with the Soviet Union. There she benefited from the assistance of the great Tolstoyan specialist E.E. Zaidenshnur, who devoted much of her life to studying the 4000 pages of drafts to War and Peace. When Feuer died before seeing the final manuscript through press, two other scholars of Russian literature, one of them her daughter, completed the task for her.